From Germany to Chile and South Africa, nations have had to endure painful reconciliation processes to heal themselves, put the past behind them and draw lessons from violent brushes with history to prevent their recurrence. India has chosen to beat a reverse path. Tired of the country’s stable democracy, preserved for seven decades after a blood-soaked independence, its muscular new caretakers are urgently poking old wounds in the hope of stirring up India’s demons to take it down the same road to perdition it long ago escaped.
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Despite being born in a frenzy of religious violence accompanying the partition of independent India into a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan in 1947 – which left up to 2 million dead and 14 million displaced – the new Indian nation chose to become a secular republic in which people of all religions would have just as much right as Hindus. This idea of India ran up against the country’s increasingly assertive majoritarian politics this week, and came up short on the floor of its House. But the resultant friction between the two ideas of India has jolted the foundational arrangement of a complex nation, triggering panic and protests nationwide, in what could well be a prolonged period of social and political unrest.
Protesters against the Citizenship Amendment Bill burn furniture on the road in Guwahati in the Indian state of Assam. Photo: EPA
Amid opposition protests and marathon debates, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) this week pushed through a bill in parliament that will give Indian citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. The Citizenship Amendment Bill, or CAB, which became an act on Thursday with the president’s assent after it was cleared by both Houses of Parliament, allows for the first time in constitutionally secular India a citizenship provision based on religion. Modi himself was conspicuously absent throughout the House debates and let his closest aide and Home Minister Amit Shah lead the government side in piloting the bill.
Indian Home Minister Amit Shah. Photo: AP
On its own, the CAB can appear to be an innocuous, almost altruistic, piece of legislation. The bill’s diabolical genius lies in what it does not mention. For example, it does not specifically say Muslims need not apply. Instead, it lists all the other communities who stand to gain from its apparently inclusive ambit – the Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsees and Christians, who are persecuted in those countries. The rationale is, Muslims cannot be persecuted in Islamic states, and hence a Muslim fleeing Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan cannot be a refugee.
Apart from the dubious assumption that Muslims are not persecuted in Islamic countries – many groups such as Pakistan’s Ahmadiyyas are, and religion is not the only basis of persecution – this arbitrary list of countries of origin is striking in what it leaves out. Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and China are also India’s neighbours, but find no mention. Sri Lanka and Myanmar are particularly stark omissions because of the many Tamil refugees who have come to India in the past and the exodus of the Rohingya after massacres in Rakhine.
A Rohingya woman at a temporary shelter in New Delhi, India. Photo: AP
The choice of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan fits the Hindu nationalist narrative of a tolerant Hindu India where Muslims flourish vis-à-vis rogue Islamist neighbours that oppress their Hindu populations. This is not an entirely unsubstantiated claim, but in this telling, there’s no such thing as a Muslim victim. The Muslim is the oppressor. This is why the Rohingya Muslims, some of whom managed to find their way to India from Bangladesh, are demonised by Hindu activists despite the painful circumstances of their arrival in India. India has taken hundreds of thousands of refugees from the region, but the Modi government has been trying to evict the Rohingya from Indian soil.
The government has taken pains to stress that the new law is not discriminatory and is meant only to help refugees, not discriminate against India’s own Muslim population. Not many are buying the assurances. The provision, which clashes with the articles 14 and 15 of the Indian Constitution that guarantee the right to equality and non-discrimination, has already been challenged in the Supreme Court by two political parties and is likely to face more legal challenges.
